


My True Disillusion

by PaulaMcG



Series: If Not a Prank [3]
Category: Harry Potter - Fandom
Genre: Animagus, Coming of Age, Flying Carpet, Hogwarts, Holding Hands, Kissing, M/M, Marauders Era (Harry Potter), Marauders Friendship (Harry Potter), Post-Sirius Black's Prank on Severus Snape, The Marauder's Map, Werewolf Registry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-09
Updated: 2019-12-09
Packaged: 2021-02-26 02:48:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,027
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21736336
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PaulaMcG/pseuds/PaulaMcG
Summary: Around his seventeenth birthday Remus becomes disillusioned more than once.
Relationships: James Potter/Lily Evans Potter, Sirius Black/Remus Lupin
Series: If Not a Prank [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2071923
Comments: 2
Kudos: 13





	My True Disillusion

**Author's Note:**

> Remus and his friends will never help me make any money. This piece can stand on its own, but it also belongs to the same extensive story in my Rowling's-first-five-novels-compliant universe as the rest of my fanfiction. While in most of my stories set before summer 1996, the reader hardly notices anything contradicting Rowling's later books or interviews, in this one the dates are based on the calendar of 1975, which means that my Marauders were born in 1957 and 1958, Remus on the 14th of March, 1958.

_Thursday, 27th February_

Deprived of pain and all feeling in my body, I don’t know whether I’m crying or not, and can’t care if he’s still kneeling by this hospital bed. He’s completed his confession – incomprehensibly relieved. Is this how he’s wanted to say he’s sorry? A convoluted explanation of how he thought he could make Snape think the werewolf was someone else, and how the secrets are safe, the Animagi’s, and even mine, because Dumbledore has made Snape swear…

Can’t he see that it’s not about keeping or revealing secrets – that it’s about life or death, about humanity or losing it forever? 

_Friday, 7th March_

Lying on my four-poster, I try to ignore him: the shaggy black mutt curled up at the foot of the bed. He’s inching closer, cautiously pressing against my leg.

I miss my Pads. I miss the mutual healing caresses, which he practised, slowly unlearning old fears.

The still bandaged hand’s resting next to the heavy book. My eyes still close too easily. I don’t want to see him, or the loss of him.

And I am tired, always woken up by nightmares in which I did kill, or worse. The dog I love has turned into an omen of death.

_Sunday, 9th March_

Having slept to the rhythm of rain against the window, I wake up to fingers dancing on strings. My father’s lute? No, our new Marauder has sneaked to the dorm with her guitar.

Cross-legged on James’s bed, she’s singing to him, “I am yours, you are mine...

“You should hear the band’s recording. Such harmonies! Some harmonies we can start learning.”

Willing to use my voice, I sit up, and respond to Lily’s smile.

She restarts, “It’s getting to the point where I’m no fun any more.”

I repeat it haltingly.

“I am sorry.”

Sirius’s hand lands on my foot.

_Monday, 10th March_

“Sometimes it hurts so badly...” It echoes softly on staircase walls. Lily’s singing for the two of us when we can’t say the words, any words.

I’ve got only images. The deep darkness of his hair against the glowing colours of the hedge. The berries on my palm for his fingers to pick and place in my mouth, tentatively brushing my lips. Replaced by today’s bare scenery: no hope of spring, nothing to nourish us.

James hurries her up Gryffindor tower, and Peter follows. But Sirius stops to wait, then adapts to my pace, almost reaches out a supporting hand.

_Wednesday, 12th March_

Recovered well enough, I will keep up. I hurry with my friends towards the statue of a hump-backed witch, towards Honeydukes and Lily’s surprise. Wormtail’s scurrying ahead. And stumbling under the invisibility cloak, involuntarily pressed against the two strong bodies, I’m dizzy from James’s posh perfume and Sirius’s more mesmerising scent of sweat – and from the sweet delusion that we’re back in our harmony, in our evolving pairings.

In the tunnel Sirius transforms, and the dog licks my hand. So quickly that only after he’s rushed away do I realise I would’ve been ready to finally ruffle his fur again.

“Prongs, don’t let me slow you down! Go! I’ll meet you behind the Hog’s Head, if you’re still there.”

“She wants all of us.”

“She wants us to forgive Sirius.” I’m closer to that than James is: wanting, perhaps soon able.

He quickens his steps again, without noticing. “She doesn’t know what he did.”

“You can tell her.” 

“Are you sure? That you can trust anyone after… Thanks!” He lifts an arm across my back and leaves his hand to squeeze my shoulder almost painfully. “She can try her best to convince me after that, if she still wants to.”

The evening caresses this cold landscape with a promise: paints branches with pale purple as a background for Lily’s brighter colours.

She’s amazed us with her illegal carpet, stored by the barman since our first year. This is what she was hiding in October when Sirius and I met her at the pub while James and Peter were concealed by the cloak, perhaps not from all her senses although she pretended otherwise.

Her song whispers in my head: something inside is telling me that… she’s got our secrets. Or some of them. By sharing hers, she’s saying it’s all right.

An incredible charm she calls Disillusioning has merged the flying carpet and each of us into the sunset sky.

“How can that name make sense?” Peter babbles to cover his fear. “Does it mean our visible bodies are only illusion?”

He leans against me, finding relative safety in me like never since the Willow Incident. We laugh – and open our hearts.

I dare grab Sirius’s almost invisible hand, challenging him not to recoil, while finally accepting his apologies. His lips touch my ear when he shares a joke about this rebellious witch making his true brother Prongs ever more smitten.

_Thursday, 13th March_

Her surprise included more than one hidden agenda. When she descends to the common room before breakfast, she gives a thumbs-up to Sirius and me, making him glance around to check if there are others paying attention to our restored closeness. And we five Marauders plot how to hide our escapade while informing Dumbledore on what we witnessed when flying to the next village, where Lily had heard Goyle order Snape to Apparate: Malfoy recruiting Snape to the Dark Lord’s party.

At breakfast an owl brings me an order, cancelling tomorrow’s birthday plans. The compulsory visit when coming of age.

_Friday, 14th March_

Since I resent the flippancy in how Dumbledore escaped exposure and punishment, helping me do the same, and forcing me to further gratefulness, I don’t want to talk to him about Snape, or myself. He must know that I’m going, and I choose the route he’s arranged for full moons.

Thanks to Lily, I’ve got my Sirius back: to walk with me until the Willow. In its shadow he fights his tears, and takes another step in our slowly unfolding intimacy: touches his lips to the corner of my mouth.

This dark journey starting in the tunnel is not his. 

Outside the Shrieking Shack I raise my wand for the Knight Bus, remembering how Sirius did the same when stranded, having run away from home. Queasy, I find myself by the London telephone box and follow the bus conductor’s instructions.

“Remus Lupin, summoned to the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures.”

The silver badge that pops out reads: _Werewolf Remus Jaws Lupin to have his status confirmed at the Werewolf Registry_.

In the imposing Atrium I’m about to present my wand at the security wizard’s request. He glances at my chest, and “Fourth floor,” he spits out.

Mum and Dad are not here, of course not. I’m seventeen now. Besides, they haven’t been my parents legally since I was five.

But they were allowed until the lift when I came for the exceptional wand licence in August almost six years ago. Back then they helped me hide my badge. Now I take the scarred hand from my chest only at the door of the Registry.

This warlock in Oxford robes examined me from head to toe also when I was eleven, without talking to me. “This one’s been interviewed by an old colleague.”

“Special arrangements? Still, sub-human.”

London, my first time really: Muggle streets, and I wander on. I’m lost. Not only here.

You are what you are. If he sings it – I am yours, you are mine, you are what you are – he’ll think, or at least he’s claimed to think: more than human. But no. I’m no wizard, no human.

This should have been clear to me all the time. But I’ve dared hope.

For whatever reason Dumbledore arranged it, he made it hard. My friends changed my life, made it right. For almost a full year now I’ve never been lonely.

Still, no hope.

_Saturday, 15th March_

Where can I go? Of course, I don’t belong among Muggles either. And I don’t want to make my parents cry. After midnight, exhausted, I journey back.

Sirius is in my bed, and not as a dog. Once again, I can sense his relief, now understandable. Lying down, I let him settle to hug me from behind. Let him believe that the worst is over – the humiliating visit. I don’t have to stop my sobbing, or to talk.

In the morning I explain to the three of them there’s no reason to celebrate. I’m not coming down for any party.

_Sunday, 16th March_

After I’ve spent all Saturday in one room – painting watercolour portraits of dark creatures to depict their bitter despair, not even trying to escape my true disillusion – on this bright morning I’m grateful for James’s offer of his cloak. I’ve craved running outside unseen.

On the dorm stairs Sirius slips under the cloak to disappear with me. I can’t resist welcoming him – and the smell of fresh bread for a birthday picnic.

At the edge of the woods he breaks the silence with his bold off-key singing. “Remember what we've said and done and felt about each other.” I do.

But perhaps I should’ve continued to tear myself away from him – so he’d be free. Perhaps it’s still happening, as now I am, for once, the one unable to talk about what hurts too badly and can’t be healed.

He’s holding my hand, guiding me where I lit our clandestine campfires last autumn. Sepia leaves under my bare feet promise that I belong to the earth at least. When we’re lying on this blanket, his cautious palms start rubbing my skin alive again.

“Ruby-throated sparrow!” He fumbles for the tune, pointing.

I can’t help smiling. “A rosefinch. Two of them!”

Two scarlet-breasted songbirds, rare in these lands. “The bright colour shows these are adult males,” I whisper.

We stay immobile, so as not to scare them off.

Sirius’s hand slides slowly up from my ankle, under my robes, and higher on my thigh than ever. “Bold Gryffindors.”

I want him too much. He wants me, too. And the confirmation of my lack of status hardly makes a difference to him – maybe just urges him to work harder to save me with his love.

I’m still the only one with a hard-on. While I’m jerking off, he stares at my face.

Sunday in the afternoon… Amazingly reconciled, I’m humming while admiring my ink lines depicting the Hogwarts grounds, having found the Marauder’s Map spread open here on our windowsill.

“Where’s Prongs now?” Peter touches my shoulder, peeking at the parchment. “Still at the lake shore?”

He must have been stalking Pads and me, too. “Was it a good idea to charm the map to always show us four?”

“We must figure out how to make it show others, too. Right?” His gaze is demanding. “Lily, first of all.”

“If she agrees.” Maybe James has shared this secret, too, with her today.

By the time he opens the door, I’ve withdrawn up to the sill. Like nearly five years ago, when we’d planned that he’d announce my condition to the other two, who turned out to have figured it out, too, each by himself.

As I’ve guessed, Lily’s with him. Peter’s followed the ink dot labelled James Potter, ever more curious when spotting it on a surprising detour through the headmaster’s office. Perhaps he’s gone to tell on the Slytherins joining a political party? No, that was done at the latest yesterday.

“May I come in?” She’s serious. “Really become a Marauder?”

I’m not sure I’d have given James the permission after the Registry visit. But what have I got to lose?

She approaches me with more warmth than before. After Sirius and Peter have stepped up to shake her hand, she strides to me and spreads her arms. I slide down into her embrace.

“He’s told me. Also about the outrageous way the Ministry treats you. I want to join to give you all my support. We’ve already demanded Dumbledore that he secure for you the future you deserve.”

I must be grateful. I close my eyes.

Someday I’ll be independent.

**Author's Note:**

> This short story was written as a series of 100-word drabbles in an attempt to make each scene concise and edit out all unnecessary words.
> 
> The phrases “It’s getting to the point where I’m no fun any more”, “I am sorry”, “Sometimes it hurts so badly”, “Something inside is telling me that [she’s] got [our] secret[s]”, “ma[d]e it hard”, “change[d] my life, ma[d]e it right”, “tear… away from… free”, “Remember what we've said and done and felt about each other”, “Ruby-throated sparrow”, “Sunday in the afternoon” and “What have I got to lose?” derive from a song written by Stephen Stills and performed by Crosby, Stills and Nash – Suite: Judy Blue Eyes.


End file.
